


Shadowclan Apprentices

by Day_Icecream (Midnight_Sundae)



Series: Warrior Cats Rewrite [2]
Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Cats, Gen, Hunting, No Plot/Plotless, Normal Life, OC's to balance out the number of cats, Riverclan is mentioned, ShadowClan (Warriors), Shadowclan (Warriors)-centric, The Greenleaf Twolegplace (Warriors), The Lake Territories (Warriors), although some of the characters have so little development, focuses on some OC's, they might as well be OC's
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-26
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21566035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Midnight_Sundae/pseuds/Day_Icecream
Summary: A day in the life of 3/6 of Shadowclan's apprentices.
Series: Warrior Cats Rewrite [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1334296
Kudos: 3





	Shadowclan Apprentices

**Author's Note:**

> Hawkpaw is Ivypaw/tail, I changed her name because of the other, more plot relevant, Ivypaw/pool.

The sun, in a rare moment of warmth, decided to show itself in the Shadowclan camp. Hawkpaw stretched and took in the warmth. The other apprentices were all on different patrols, along with her mentor, so she didn’t have much of anything to do at the moment. 

She surveyed the camp and spotted most of the queens taking advantage of the uncharastically warm autumn day as well. Newttear and Darkflash were even getting along for once, well, maybe the fact that Newttear was busy with her kits, and Darkflash was busy being heavily pregnant had something to do with it.

Speaking of kits, a couple of them were playing close to her. Yep, three kits were definitely running towards her. She stood up and stretched again, didn’t want to get pounced on by a kit who didn’t know how to respect boundaries.

She was stopped from escaping the situation, however, by two kits taking shelter from the third behind her.

“Ha! Try to get us now,” Snakekit boasted.

“Yeah!” Tigerkit added, rather unnecessarily if she did say so herself.

Dawnkit tensed up, narrowed her eyes, and tried to leap over her.

Hawkpaw managed to avoid the cream kit’s arc by dodging at the right time, unluckily for the Dawnkit, jumping successfully didn’t mean landing successfully. Dawnkit landed on the outside of her paw, which threw the rest of her off balance, she tumbled and rolled onto Tigerkit who let out a yelp of protest as he was pinned down. Dawnkit tried to play the entire clumsy maneuver as done on purpose, and puffed out her chest.

In her hubris, Dawnkit forgot about her second opponent, Snakekit, who knocked her off Tigerkit with a pouce. Dawnkit let out a mewl of surprise.

Hawkpaw took the moment to quietly retreat from the playing kits.

The kits, obviously sensing she wanted to be left alone, came scrabbling after her.

“Hey!”

She sighed and turned around, “what.”

“You’re an apprentice, teach us!”

Three eyes looked at her with varying degrees of hope.

“Only six moon olds can start training, none of you look there yet.”

“You’re boring,” Snakekit huffed, “if you don’t want to teach us just say so.”

Hawkpaw flicked her tail and started walking away, kits were annoying, she’d bet she had never been like that when she was younger.

Whatever, there were better things to pay attention to. Like for example, how literally all the other apprentices were actually doing something fun, while she was stuck in camp because ‘there weren't enough warriors’. Bleh.

She paused and checked to see if the place she’d retreated to was a good spot. It was nice and sunny, good vantage point, and farther away from the kits this time. Yep, good spot, she curled up in the sun.

Farther away from camp, and doing much more exciting activities, Strikepaw was on a hunting patrol.

Strikepaw sniffed and looked around. He was perched on top of a large, mossy rock on the shores of a marsh.

The sounds of bugs humming and birds chirping filled his ears, something splashed in the water that would be interesting if it weren't on the other side of the marsh.

A slithering sound suddenly caught his attention. 

A snake, around the length of his foreleg, was cautiously sliding out of their hole. They flicked their tongue and Strikepaw checked which way the wind blew.

The snake didn’t notice him. Strikepaw was facing downwind.

Strikepaw didn’t move, the snake was still mostly in their hole. If he wanted to make this catch patience was key.

The snake slowly slithered out, they paused and flicked their tounge, they slithered out a bit more, the snake bobbed their head to sense anything, they very carefully creeped out of their hole, they tasted the air, they slowly crawled further, they checked the air just in case, finally they fully emerged from their shelter.

Strikepaw stood statuelike, eyes never leaving the slithering prey, until-

-He hesitated, no, not yet, it was very likely the snake was still on high alert. He should wait more.

The snake started to curl up on a rock close to his. Strikepaw tensed-

-Wait, not yet. The thing about snakes is that they can and will bite back, he should be absolutely certain the snake wasn’t still expecting an attack.

The snake tucked their head close to their body, sunlight bounced off their scales. This was-

-Not yet, what if-

-If he waited much longer the snake was going to sense him-

-he got ready to pounce-

-were they poisonous-

-how had he not checked already-

-the snake clearly already knew he was there-

-someone was watching him, he was sure of it-

-he was ready to pounce-

-the pounce was going to miss-

-he was going to pounce-

-the snake darted away.

Strikepaw stared at the place the stupid snake used to be, and then lashed out against the mossy rock.

Twenty minutes! Wasted!

He wanted to cry out in anger, it wasn’t fair.

But making noise would alert any other possible prey to his presence, and then he would definitely come back empty-handed.

With a mutter of frustration, Strikepaw stalked off.

A different apprentice, not too far away, was having more success with her patrol.

The air near the Riverclan-Shadowclan border blew softly through the pine trees, the faint sounds of paws hitting the ground was covered by the cawing of birds caught off guard by the uncharacteristically warm weather.

Shadepaw was following the two warriors on patrol, Blackstar had decided that, no matter how stretched thin they were, patrolling the borders was a task meant for a group not majorly composed of apprentices. Shadepaw had to agree with his assessment, she did not trust most of her age group either.

Russetfur called back, “A Riverclan patrol was here earlier, they’re long gone now.”

“That’s usual, right?” Shadepaw questioned.

“Yep.” 

She’d thought as much, but it never hurt to be thorough. 

The Greenleaf Twolegplace began to come into view. It was cleared out for the coming leaf-fall. The only inhabitants around this time were the twolegs who occasionally took shelter from the leaf-bare snow, and they didn’t seem to want to risk getting injured by the clan cats who came by, so they weren't a problem.

Shadepaw glanced around in anticipation, the Greenleaf Twolegplace marked the end of their patrol of a large chunk of the western border, and Snowbird had promised her that they would be learning battle techniques afterwards.

The short walk to the end of their patrol was uneventful, there were no invaders from another clan, signs of dangerous creatures, or really anything out of the ordinary.

Once they reached the building, the only trace of twolegs was the faint lingering scent of theirs.

Lacking any twolegs, the Greenleaf Twolegplace felt eerie, it always looked so odd, the seemingly useless dens built with impossible materials, but without the twolegs it was like a missing link was broken, there was no longer and explanation to justify its existence, and the Greenleaf Twolegplace fell back into the realm of surreal. 

Maybe it was just her, perhaps she’d gets used to the uncanny building over time. Now she just wanted to get away from it.

“Snowbird,” she came sliding up to her mentor, “I recall you said something about battle techniques?”

Snowbird snorted, “Shade, wait ‘till we’re at the training grounds.”

Shadepaw grinned playfully to signal she was fully aware they weren't going to start training right that second, but instead wanted to bug someone to stave off boredom and possible uneasiness over the building, although she’d never admit it.

“We’re heading back now,” Russetfur said, “Since the training grounds are on the way, I’ll report to camp myself and you two can stay there.”

Snowbird nodded.

The three cats started on their path back. The pines creaked in contentment and the birds chirped in a language of complex patterns we could never hope to even begin to understand. 

Three kits to the east of the border played outside in one of autumn's last warm days, unknowing of how they would change the future of the clans forever.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering why Snowbird called Shadepaw "Shade" it's because Shadowclan uses first names as a habit they picked up from rouges somewhere along the line, all the clans have vaguely different cultures and wordings because separated groups do that and I wanted to emphasize their differences.
> 
> Also considering how close clan cats are to twolegs in the Lake territory, I wanted the clan cats to have more of a relationship with them, even if that relationship is just "wow this place sure is weird".


End file.
